Imagine a Better World
by Cr1mson5
Summary: Tim is creating paradise, but at what cost? Rated T for safety


**Still in the process of owning nothing**

Dear Bat-family, Justice League, and Teen Titans:

There is a reason I don't show up anymore.

What is it, you ask? I'll tell you.

If you could see me now, you wouldn't be impressed. I used to think this place was too wild to tame, but I was wrong. All it took was a little more effort. So, I've brought the Unternet under my control. Lonnie would've taken it, but I got there first. I don't think you want to know what happened between us, and it's too long of a story to tell here, anyway. But, the main point is that I won, and now, I'm tasked with maintaining what I built here.

Still, you say, all of that is good. You lost a lot, sure, but you achieved your goal. So, why are you hiding from us? Why won't you come home?

Imagine a better world, like they always say. It's a paradise, isn't it, the world you can see? There's no crime, no poverty, no crippling diseases and killing people before their times. People live together in peace and harmony, and even all of you can get along with each other. You don't even need to put your old suits on anymore, the Kryptonian fabrics and the cowls and the bracelets and the rings and the lightning bolts. You haven't needed to touch them in so long that you've forgotten what they feel like. In fact, you don't even have to look at them. You just hang them up in the back of your closets and let yourselves forget about the old days. Because that, you say to each other, is what happens in a perfect world. A perfect world doesn't need Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, or anybody else to save it. It's already saved itself. And it's like heaven on earth, because you can live normal lives and not have to worry about anything bad happening to you or anybody else. Finally, you realize, after all these years of looking on from the outside, you can live amongst the people you protected. But you are no longer their protectors. That was your title from days long gone by, days that no longer have any meaning to you or anyone else. Now, you are their peers, their equals, and their friends.

It feels good, doesn't it? It makes you wish for it, want it with everything you are and everything you have. That is why I can't come home. Because I'm working to procure that dream for the whole world, you see, and it's a time-consuming job.

The villains, they don't know anything's different about the Unternet. They don't know that it's become _my_ territory. And every time they come in here, they always say the same things. They always tell me that I don't know what I'm dealing with, that I have no idea what forces I'm exploiting, that even _they_ don't want to mess with the Unternet's foundations, and, of course, that I'm making their lives hell. But I _have_ to do that, because, if I don't, my plan will never work.

Call it whatever you like. Call it mind control, manipulation, unjust, or a violation of human dignity, if you want. The bottom line is that _I'm making them all work for me._ They won't trouble you again because I won't let them. Every time they come in here to try and wrench control from my grasp, they just sink deeper and deeper into my traps, letting me mold them and change them into acceptable citizens. And they don't even notice it, not that I know of. That recent drop in crime rates across the globe was my doing. And it's all because I want to create that better world for you all to live in and enjoy.

Me, though, I can't enjoy that dream, not like you can. If I ever want to see it sustained, I have to stay here, in the Unternet, making sure that they don't get away from my ideals, the things I'm teaching them to cherish. If this goes south, I could never forgive myself.

I do10010010much time left to explain. The damn connection's breaking u1001001011011101Tam I love her, and I110010010101011011miss you all. You'v100101010111010101good to me, and I wish I di010101110101011101to leave you. Just don't10100101010101Doomsday and Mikalek, and if off. Stay sa101101010101010101010love .

_Emergency shutdown initiated. Message erased._

Tim's fist slammed into the terminal, and although it wasn't his real fist, he still felt the pain. Now they could never know. He turned his attention to the fires raging along his territory's borders that were quickly being put out by the former villains. _Lonnie's trying to get back in,_ he thought, and then it occurred to him that pixels had never seemed so bright, not even when he was nose-to-screen with the computers in the Batcave. Tim was reluctant to have to hurt his friend, even here where it wasn't really hurting him, but Anarky needed to be taught a lesson. Red Robin was not to be trifled with—under any circumstances.

Tim sighed, sliding his helmet on and adjusting the scope before collecting his lance and starting out the door.

He had work to do tonight.


End file.
